Understanding faith in a secular world. It's easy to depict organized religion as evil, led by greedy rapist scumbags and followed only by the drones and sheeple, but this trope hasn't been cutting edge for the past forty years. In setting up evil priestly straw men for our postmodern heroes to blow away, authors too often overlook why brilliant people like Boethius could walk smiling to execution, St. Francis could try to protect the animals everyone else wanted to eat, or Hildegard von Bingen could write awe-inspiring music and plays. Let's talk about books that depict the complexities of religious faith in interesting, insightful ways. Timothy Cassidy-Curtis, Buzz Dixon, Eytan Kollin, Bradford Lyau, Sherwood Smith

The Bore of the Worlds: Why Would Aliens Fight Us?(Sunset in Meeting House)

Is Stephen Hawking smart to be terrified of alien invasions, "Berserker" robots, and overachieving computers? The vast majority of planets will not have sentient life (if life at all); galactic resources are so common as to be free for the taking without annoying any other species; territory is meaningless in a galaxy of 100 billion suns; and the likelihood is that any spacefaring planet would have the equivalent of "replicators" and "holodecks." That takes care of all terrestrial reasons for warfare. So what could lead to interstellar war -- anything? Or will the aliens just ignore us as "mostly harmless?" Buzz Dixon, Cody Goodfellow, Larry Niven, Alan Pollard, Janine Young